Many middle-class white people, especially those of us from the suburbs,
like to think that we got to where we are today by virtue of our merit
- hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while
we may be sympathetic to the plight of others, we close down when we
hear the words "affirmative action" or "racial preferences."
We worked hard, we made it on our own, the thinking goes, why don't
'they'? After all, the Civil Rights Act was enacted almost 40 years
ago.

What we don't readily acknowledge is that racial preferences have a
long, institutional history in this country - a white history. Here
are a few ways in which government programs and practices have channeled
wealth and opportunities to white people at the expense of others.

Early Racial Preferences

We all know the old history, but it's still worth reminding ourselves
of its scale and scope. Affirmative action in the American "workplace"
first began in the late 17th century when European indentured servants
- the original source of unfree labor on the new tobacco plantations
of Virginia and Maryland - were replaced by African slaves. In exchange
for their support and their policing of the growing slave population,
lower-class Europeans won new rights, entitlements, and opportunities
from the planter elite.

White Americans were also given a head start with the help of the U.S.
Army. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee,
Creeks and other eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River to
make room for white settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit,
giving away millions of acres of what had been Indian Territory west
of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10% of the total
land area of the United States, was converted to private hands, overwhelmingly
white, under Homestead Act provisions.

The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only "free white persons"
to become naturalized citizens, thus opening the doors to European immigrants
but not others. Only citizens could vote, serve on juries, hold office,
and in some cases, even hold property. In this century, Alien Land Laws
passed in California and other states, reserved farm land for white
growers by preventing Asian immigrants, ineligible to become citizens,
from owning or leasing land. Immigration restrictions further limited
opportunities for nonwhite groups. Racial barriers to naturalized U.S.
citizenship weren't removed until the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, and
white racial preferences in immigration remained until 1965.

In the South, the federal government never followed through on General
Sherman's Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed
slave "40 acres and a mule" as reparations. Only once was
monetary compensation made for slavery, in Washington, D.C. There, government
officials paid up to $300 per slave upon emancipation - not to the slaves,
but to local slaveholders as compensation for loss of property.

When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished
condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued
to white slaveowners and their descendents. Economists who try to place
a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years
of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at
$1 trillion.

Jim Crow laws, instituted in the late 19th and early 20th century and
not overturned in many states until the 1960s, reserved the best jobs,
neighborhoods, schools and hospitals for white people.

The Advantages Grow, Generation to Generation

Less known are more recent government racial preferences, first enacted
during the New Deal, that directed wealth to white families and continue
to shape life opportunities and chances.

The landmark Social Security Act of 1935 provided a safety net for
millions of workers, guaranteeing them an income after retirement. But
the act specifically excluded two occupations: agricultural workers
and domestic servants, who were predominately African American, Mexican,
and Asian. As low-income workers, they also had the least opportunity
to save for their retirement. They couldn't pass wealth on to their
children. Just the opposite. Their children had to support them.

Like Social Security, the 1935 Wagner Act helped establish an important
new right for white people. By granting unions the power of collective
bargaining, it helped millions of white workers gain entry into the
middle class over the next 30 years. But the Wagner Act permitted unions
to exclude non-whites and deny them access to better paid jobs and union
protections and benefits such as health care, job security, and pensions.
Many craft unions remained nearly all-white well into the 1970s. In
1972, for example, every single one of the 3,000 members of Los Angeles
Steam Fitters Local #250 was still white.

But it was another racialized New Deal program, the Federal Housing
Administration, that helped generate much of the wealth that so many
white families enjoy today. These revolutionary programs made it possible
for millions of average white Americans - but not others - to own a
home for the first time. The government set up a national neighborhood
appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated
communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible
for home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between
1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans.
More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal
support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100
went to African Americans.

These government programs made possible the new segregated white suburbs
that sprang up around the country after World War II. Government subsidies
for municipal services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further,
in turn fueling commercial investments. Freeways tied the new suburbs
to central business districts, but they often cut through and destroyed
the vitality of non-white neighborhoods in the central city.

Today, Black and Latino mortgage applicants are still 60% more likely
than whites to be turned down for a loan, even after controlling for
employment, financial, and neighborhood factors. According to the Census,
whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. As recently
as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a
black population of less than 1%.

Reaping the Rewards of Racial Preference

One result of the generations of preferential treatment for whites
is that a typical white family today has on average eight times the
assets, or net worth, of a typical African American family, according
to economist Edward Wolff. Even when families of the same income are
compared, white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families.
Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one's
home, and how much one inherited from parents.

But a family's net worth is not simply the finish line, it's also the
starting point for the next generation. Those with wealth pass their
assets on to their children - by financing a college education, lending
a hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a home.
Some economists estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth accumulation
depends on these intergenerational transfers. White advantage is passed
down, from parent to child to grand-child. As a result, the racial wealth
gap - and the head start enjoyed by whites - appears to have grown since
the civil rights days.

In 1865, just after Emancipation, it is not surprising that African
Americans owned 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States.
But by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, Black
Americans still possessed only a meager 1 percent of national wealth.

Rather than recognize how "racial preferences" have tilted
the playing field and given us a head start in life, many whites continue
to believe that race does not affect our lives. Instead, we chastise
others for not achieving what we have; we even invert the situation
and accuse non-whites of using "the race card" to advance
themselves.

Or we suggest that differential outcomes may simply result from differences
in "natural" ability or motivation. However, sociologist Dalton
Conley's research shows that when we compare the performance of families
across racial lines who make not just the same income, but also hold
similar net worth, a very interesting thing happens: many of the racial
disparities in education, graduation rates, welfare usage and other
outcomes disappear. The "performance gap" between whites and
nonwhites is a product not of nature, but unequal circumstances.

Colorblind policies that treat everyone the same, no exceptions for
minorities, are often counter-posed against affirmative action. But
colorblindness today merely bolsters the unfair advantages that color-coded
practices have enabled white Americans to long accumulate.